TIME FOR REFLECTION. REFLECTION TECHNOLOGY, THAT IS 

How often have you noticed when driving, that sometimes irritating reflection just in fron t of your windshield, usually of something laying the dashboard? Someone is about to turn this into a whole new industry. Why didn't you think of that?

A company who didn't have to search for a name to describe their operation has come up with a product, along with practical applications, for the phenomenen previously seen seen as an impractical mirage. The product is "Private Eye". It can be hand-held or hung over the center of one eye. The field of vision is only partially obstructed, allowing you to see outside the picture much as you would while watching a regular 12-inch TV monitor. That's the purpose, to provide a non-existent TV monitor that appears to be located about two feet in front of you. Applications are limitless.

Weighing less than two ounces and measuring one inch by 1.2 inches by 3.2 inches (about the size of a video camera eyepiece), the display produces a quality resolution and image comparable to that of a conventional 12-inch monitor or personal computer screen -- 720 X 280 pixels. Formatted in print, it can provide 25 lines with 80 characters per line. The unit only draws 1/2 watt and can be battery-powered.

Since Private Eye is a monocular display and does not occupy the full field of vision, background environment can be viewed independently or integrated with the display in the mind's eye. Thus the viewer can receive information from the display while operating other equipment or performing additional tasks.

Applications for pocket computers, hands-free information displays, automated maintenance manuals, radio pagers, personal information displays, telephone handsets, hand-held instrumentation, novel video games and hand-held data input terminals are already being studied. It could allow you to watch one football game in the foreground while viewing a competing game in the background on a standard TV. Prices of stock quotations could be projected in front of you while travelling on an escalator. Or you could see the map of the area in which you are travelling and pictorially follow the road to destination. A surgeon could continue a brain operation while watching the PET scan of the brain without having to turn his head.

The inventors are not unknowns. Allen Becker, inventor and founder of the reflection concept, was a founder of Cadmus Computer Systems from 1983 to 1986. He was also a co-founder of Kurzweil Computer Products. Other co-founders of Reflection Technology include Ben Wells, formerly with Polaroid and Nathan Goldshlag of Think Technologies and Kurzweil, both highly successful engineering entrepreneurs. More information: Reflection Technology, 240 Bear Hill Road, Waltham, MA 02154.

Phone: 617/ 890-5905. Fax: 890-5918.

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